Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy #3)(50)
Extracting the blade, I slid the tip into the mechanism and then slammed my weight against it. Metal ground against metal, but when I tried to turn the knife, nothing happened.
The sound of voices drifted toward me. It was another patrol. Grabbing hold of the hilt with both hands, I tried to remove the blade, but it was stuck.
I heaved and hauled for all I was worth, but I was out of time. Just as the patrol rounded the corner, I dived off the side of the staircase and into the shadows.
“It’s as though the blasted things knew what we were planning,” one of the guards said, spitting into the gutter. “Has to be a dozen of them in the city, if not more.”
“They’ll all be in the city if the miners guild doesn’t speed along the process,” another replied.
“It’s not the miners, it’s the builders,” a third chimed in. “Seems there’s some concern about the strain it’ll put on the tree, and half of them are tied up with finishing the construction.”
“Waste of time, that,” the first said. “No point to it other than to free Tristan from that folly of a promise. Looks like the old devil has a soft spot for his son, after all.”
They all laughed, then one added, “Wouldn’t be our problem if the King would open the gates. Five centuries of captivity and we finally get our freedom only to have to hide in the same old hole for the sake of a feud between royals.”
“Do you want to be caught between Tristan and Roland?” the first asked, but however the other two responded was drowned out by a series of booms.
I cowered next to the steps, eyes on the darkness above as I waited for the rocks to start falling. For Trollus to be destroyed, everyone killed, and me along with them.
But other than a shower of tiny pebbles and dust, nothing happened.
“Hope no one was still in the labyrinth,” one of the guards laughed, but there was a slight shake to his voice. “Will be strange not to see the occasional trader coming through that gate. End of an era.”
“End of an era,” the others repeated, and then they moved on.
It hit me then what had happened. Whether it had been to stop the sluag or prevent anyone from leaving, the trolls had collapsed the labyrinth. And I’d lost my escape route.
My stomach hollowed and I struggled to keep the sharp edges of panic from cutting too deep. I’d find another way, and if not, I still had friends in Trollus. If I needed to, I could hide in the city while we figured out a way for me to escape. But in the meantime, I’d risked everything coming here for information, and I refused to leave empty-handed.
Cautiously sticking my head out from the shadows, I checked to make sure the guards were gone, and then I turned my attention to my dagger, which was still jammed in the door. Getting in the library that way wasn’t going to happen. Neither, frankly, was getting anywhere other than the shadows I was crouched in. Trollus had been locked down, everyone but the King’s guards and those tasked with hunting down the sluag was hidden behind doors.
I shifted my weight on the sewer grate beneath me, cursing the sluag, Angoulême, the King, and most of all myself. I was going to be stuck here until curfew was lifted.
Water sloshed beneath me, a foul smell rising, and I buried my face in my sleeve. Could things get any worse? Then an idea occurred to me, and I looked down.
An elaborate network of sewers ran beneath Trollus; every structure – even those in the Dregs – connected to the system. The trolls had little tolerance for filth, and, as such, the crown had a small army of half-bloods that kept the system clean and in working order, living their lives in the tunnels that their betters barely acknowledged existed. And if they could move around down there, so could I.
Easing open the latch holding the grate shut, I lifted the metal bars, silently thanking whoever had recently oiled the hinges. Then I lay on my stomach and peered inside.
The sewer was perhaps six feet in diameter, a stream of water and waste running down the center of it. But while I’d expected total blackness, the space was dimly lit by lamps fastened to the ceiling. Holding onto the edge of the hole, I lowered myself in, dropping the last bit to land with my feet on either side of the malodorous stream. The library latrine was located at the rear of the building, and sure enough, I only had to go a few dozen paces before I encountered a shaft leading upwards.
As I suspected, it was large enough, albeit barely, for me to fit, and I could see the trap door covering the top. Unfortunately, the shaft was coated with filth.
Until this moment, I’d have said that growing up on a pig farm had stripped away any squeamishness I’d been born with, but staring into that foul space, I was sorely tempted to go back the way I’d came. But lives depended on me finding out where Angoulême was hidden, and if saving them meant wallowing in troll shit, then I’d do it.
Pulling off my cloak, I used it to wipe away as much of the waste as I could reach; then, taking a deep a breath that nearly turned into a retch, I wriggled into the shaft.
It was awful, and for every six inches of progress, I slid an inch back, my boots scraping against the slimy stone. The smell made me dizzy, my heart pounding as I contemplated what would happen if I became stuck. But after what seemed an eternity, my fingers knocked against the trap, flipping it open. Fresh air filtered down, and I gasped in a few mouthfuls before taking a firm grip on the edge and pulling myself out. I landed with a soft thud on the polished floor, and I fumbled around in the darkness until I found the basin of wash water and toweling, using them to wipe the worst of the filth off my hands and face.